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Immersive Worlds Ricardo Miranda Zuniga
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- Fiktion
I have been a professor of "New Media" since 1999 and while teaching technical courses, I have learned that it can be inspirational to students to interweave fiction into technical courses. The short stories that I select relate directly to the technical material, such as web development. For example, a story such as E.M. Forster's 1909 "The Machine Stops" is both inspirational and iluminating to students. Most students never considered how a 1909 fiction can reflect so much of contemporary life. Over the years, I have developed a list of such readings and I have decided to read, record and publish these readings. Although I am not a voice actor, I hope that you will enjoy these readings.
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Beyond Lies the Wub
"Beyond Lies the Wub" by Philip K. Dick published in the July 1952 Planet Stories. Philip K. Dick's first published genre story reflects upon the most base nature of men - consumed by the self, survival, eating, killing. A human spaceship on Mars purchases animals as live stock in preparation for the trip back to Earth. The ship's Captain Franco is not a reflective man. He justifies his actions and words as others walk away from his interactions. One of his crew, Peterson, purchases a giant pig-like creature named "wub." As Peterson leads the leashed wub to the ship, Captain Franco is immediately disgusted but he also sees an immense food source. However, the wub is an ancient, curious and highly intelligent species.
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They Took All My Money in One Day
This isn't Science Fiction, however, it is a story that projects a future in which we all are stock traders. I wrote the short story following an afternoon commute from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn in which I did encounter several of the elements in the story. I wrote the story in Janaury 2023, a brief reflection on the explosion of retail stock trading.
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The Machine Stops
"The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster published in November 1909 issue of The Oxford and Cambridge Review. Perhaps due to radio and an expanding telephone system and inventions such as the Nipkow disk and mechanical televsions Forster was able to envision people communicating via hand-held discs. But even with these 19th century inventions, Forster's world in which people live in isolation and communicate via a live image seems incredibly prescient. Due to apocalyptic wars, humanity retreated into the earth and constructed a gigantic machine to tend to all their needs. After hundreds of years, the Machine is a god-like construction, until it begins to break down.
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With Folded Hands
"With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson published in the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Following World War II and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Williamson felt that "some of the technological creations we had developed with the best intentions might have disastrous consequences in the long run." Today, with the rising use of artificial intelligence, Williamson's short story seems as relevant as when it was first published in 1947.